Chapter 41
Wisps of steam clung stubbornly in the corners of the room, thinning but refusing to vanish. The water of my bath lapped at my chin. I stared at the marks across my thighs, my wrists, my ribs, the fresh bruises that Menelaus had given me in his eagerness tonight.
Roz hopped lightly onto the side of the tub. Its long red tail flicked as it leaned close, pressing a cool nose against my ear. I exhaled, the corner of my mouth twitching though I was in no mood to smile. “I’m sorry I was cross the other night,” I murmured. “I brought hotchgotten for you.”
A high squeak burst from it, and in a flash, Roz was gone from my side, scampering across the floor to the low table. It nosed at the folded linen eagerly until it uncovered the golden, buttery treat waiting beneath.
I wished something as simple as hotchgotten could make me happy.
The door creaked and I froze. Roz startled, its pale eyes flashing toward the sound before it darted away, leaving a scatter of crumbs in its path as it vanished into the shadows.
Achilles stepped inside, the hard lines of his shoulders drawn tight as he crossed the room.
He stopped at the edge of the bath and lowered his gaze.
The silence enveloped me, more complete than the water holding me afloat.
His eyes dragged across me, over the bruises, the cloth clutched to my sternum, the strands of wet hair plastered to my face.
He didn’t look away. Didn’t grant me even that mercy.
My grip tightened on the linen until my knuckles whitened beneath the water. Steam drifted between us, caressing his jaw and catching on the faint tremor in his breath. Still, he said nothing.
The longer he stared, the louder the air seemed to hum, until I swore the silence itself was screaming.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I forced out at last. “Menelaus is obviously suspicious. If he finds you …” My throat locked. “You need to leave.”
He didn’t move. Not a step … as if my words had never been spoken.
“Achilles.” My voice cracked. “Do you hear me? You can’t stay!”
Still nothing. Only that stare, like a storm was held behind his eyes.
The linen slipped in my grip and something in me snapped. “What do you want?” I hissed.
His breath flared. “You ask me that?” His voice was a growl, like it had been ripped from the bottom of his chest. “Gods, Helena, I want to rip him apart for laying a hand on you. I want to drag him into the dirt until he never touches you again.” He broke off, his hand flexing at his side, knuckles cracking as his stare locked on me, blazing and dangerous.
“What I want is for you not to look like this.”
His shadow loomed, and then … he dropped, falling to his knees. He was beside the bath in an instant, one hand braced against the rim, the other reaching, trembling, until his calloused palm framed my wet face.
“I can’t watch this anymore,” Achilles murmured, his voice torn open.
His forehead hovered a breath from mine, his breath ragged with forlornness and grief.
“I can’t watch him touch you and pretend I am nothing to you.
I have followed him into every war. I have bled for him.
I have called him brother.” His voice cracked on the word.
“And still … he takes from me without even seeing what he breaks.”
The water shifted with my shiver, rippling over bruises that already ached. I bit back a sob. “You think I want him to?” I cried. “You think I don’t die a little every time he—”
“Helena.” His thumb pressed against my cheeks as his eyes burned into mine, desperate. “I know,” he said, breaking on the words. “I know.”
My breath hitched, my chest hollowing. “I hate this,” I whispered, the truth spilling into the steam.
He didn’t answer. He only bent his head and pressed his forehead to mine as if he could hold me together by sheer will alone. The silence trembled with everything neither of us could speak.
Achilles slid his arms beneath me, lifting me from the bath as if I weighed nothing. Water streamed off my body, running over his shoulders, soaking into the linen at his chest. He carried me without pause, leaving a trail that glittered in the firelight.
At the bed, he set me down with a gentleness that made my throat ache, his hands trembling though he tried to steady them.
His mouth descended in a rush, a kiss meant to reclaim, to brand. Pain seared through the bruises, white-hot. I flinched, a strangled cry breaking from my throat before I could stop it, my hands jerking against his chest as if to push him away.
He stopped at once. His lips hovered above mine, his chest heaving. His dark blue eyes searched my face, stricken, as if my sound had cut deeper than any spear could.
“Someday it will just be you and me,” he whispered.
The vow lingered like fire in the air. Then he gathered me against him, holding me close, his forehead buried in my damp hair. He didn’t try again. He only held me, desperately, as if he could bind my fractures back together by sheer will.
And in that silence, I clung to him, knowing we were already too far gone.
The world was still dark when I woke, though the marble columns beyond the bed glowed faintly with the coming dawn. The silk sheets tangled at my waist, and warmth pressed along my back, solid, steady. Achilles.
He was breathing deep and even, one arm heavy around my hips, his chest rising and falling with the kind of sleep I could never seem to claim for myself.
He was beautiful like this. Softened. Mortal. His light brown hair mussed by sleep. No armor, no grim command on his face. Just a man. Just … mine.
I turned slowly, careful not to wake him, until I was facing him fully. The moonlight, faint and fading, highlighted the edges of him. Bronze skin dusted with old wounds and new. He had so many scars.
Some were jagged, like a blade had been wrested through him in fury. Others looked like burns faded to a dull silver. One near his hip curved like the crescent moon, and another slashed across his shoulder in a raised white knot.
My fingers drifted toward the one just beneath his collarbone, white and thin like a whip of lightning. I skimmed the edge of it, and his lashes stirred. A faint twitch. His eyes finally lifted to mine, blue and endless, catching me in the act.
“You didn’t sleep long,” he murmured, his voice rough with sleep and something else. Something tender.
“No,” I whispered. “I never do.”
He shifted onto his back, one arm still behind my head, letting me curl against his side. I pressed a kiss to his shoulder.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” he said. “But if you had, I wouldn’t have minded.”
I smiled against his skin. Then let my fingers glide down the next scar, one that sliced across his shoulder.
“Tell me?”
He blinked. “About that one?”
I nodded.
His chest rose slowly. “That was from a harpy’s talon. South of Delos. The thing was nesting in the temple ruins and picking off pilgrims one by one. It took three of us just to bring it down.”
“A harpy?” I repeated, my brow lifting.
His eyes closed, like what he’d just said was nothing. “I was younger then. I thought I could impress a high priestess by climbing her mountain barefoot. I got halfway up before the thing screamed down from the sky and tore straight through my shoulder.”
I traced the edge of the mark again, softer this time. “Did it work? Was she impressed,” I teased, a slight smile across my lips.
He cracked one eye open, a beautiful grin spreading across his face. “She blessed me with eternal protection from pride. Then dumped a jar of sheep’s blood on my head.”
I laughed, moving closer. “Sounds like she knew exactly how reckless you were.”
“I still am,” he said lazily as his fingers traced the curve of my spine. “Lying here with you proves it, and it’s the only tale I’d risk everything to keep.”
Reckless. The word tangled through me. That was what this was … what we were. Every stolen breath, every touch in the shadows. Reckless, and yet I clung to it as if it were the only thing that made me feel alive. I let my fingers drift to another scar, just beneath his first rib. “And this one?”
His smile faded, just a little. “That was from the Battle of Therma. An Illyrian commander with a curved blade and nothing to lose. He was fast. But not fast enough.”
My hand stilled. “You were almost—”
“Killed? Yes.” His gaze was unwavering. “It happens, Helena. We bleed. We mend. We go on.”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I ran my thumb down a long pale line across his abdomen. “What about this one?”
He exhaled slowly. “Minotaur. Not a true one, mind you. A beast twisted by years of dark magic and pit-fighting. They kept him chained beneath the arena in Kyros. People paid silver to watch him tear men apart. I freed him.”
I blinked. “You freed him?”
“He deserved better than chains.” His voice had turned haunted. “He died anyway. But at least he died outside.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat. “You’ve seen so much.”
He looked at me like he could see straight through me. “And you haven’t.”
It wasn’t an accusation. It was a truth. And it stung.
I turned my face toward the ceiling. “I’ve never been anywhere,” I admitted, the words slipping out too quietly.
“Before all this, the palace, the Trials, I’d only known my father’s house and my village and the hill behind it.
I used to climb it just to see where the sky touched the sea.
But that’s all I’ve ever seen of the world. ”
Achilles was silent for a moment. Then he rolled toward me, one arm bending beneath his head as he studied me with unreadable eyes. “Would you like to?”
I blinked at him. “What?”